I wrote this piece for the Y! magazine. One reason to post it here is that I said I’ll post my published articles in this blog.Another reason is also to get some practice in categorizing the content within Word Press. Ciao!!

A new decade is always interesting. Contemporary historians tend to generalize trends in terms of the decades gone. 80s was for the PC, 90s for the Internet, the first decade of the millennia for the Youtube, Facebook and everything that survived the Dot com Crash. What’s in store for this year and then onwards for the decade? How would you flashback in a few decades?

The past 30 years of innovation and challenges in end-user computing has been enormous. This has peaked in the last decade with much more innovation happening from a user experience perspective. The cell phone which at the beginning of the decade was at least half a kilo brick is now a sleek device not much larger then a Dairy Milk pack. As Nokia claims – adding a phone to the phone made them the biggest camera manufacturer in the world diluting the line between consumer electronics and communications devices.

Then came the iPhone, which can be credited to starting this focus where users had the world at their fingertips – literally. Then Kindle revolutionized the e-Book world. We will have to wait and see how iPad impacts the world.

The next decade will be how people use the more easily available wireless connection to enrich their online experience with more video. The iPad and other sleeker internet access devices with larger screens are possibly the devices that will make it easier for people to watch video on the move. Instead of the grainy small resolution video, you will be able to watch full screen and even High Density (HD) videos on these devices. You then connect the audio through a blue tooth headset. Your video may be stored locally or be streamed over the network.

These days we don’t think twice before uploading our pictures to flickr, facebook or some other photo sharing site. With bandwidth becoming more affordable, and content being easier to access over the network, we’ll start seeing more personal videos being uploaded to Youtube and similar sites.

The other big semi visible but important part of technology progress is the increasing use of cloud computing infrastructure. When we use Gmail, or Hotmail or yahoo for e-mail, search and storing information, we are already using a remote computer system and trusting our data to it. While these were limited services, cloud computing itself as a product can enable lots of small business and even individuals to setup online businesses and platforms. It will enable smaller organizations with limited budget to be able to utilize more complex system with a fee. Computing will then becoming a utility brought to you through the internet.

While these are the visible icons of the progress, there has been a lot of other innovation which lie underneath the visible progress. Every year in the past few years, technologies have enabled companies to pack in more components into ever smaller scale. Dual-core and quad-core CPUs enable massive computing power that until a few years ago was only available at specialist labs. Technologist realized that instead of packing in too many components into the same chip, running multiple CPUs actually increased the parallel processing power and at the same time reducing heat dissipation, enabling to build efficient machines.

On the other hand, for those who work in the industry, the greater problems lie in how to manage power and cooling for large cloud computing clusters. Since there are no mechanical parts in computers, almost all energy is radiated out as heat – creating a massive cooling problem when you have larger numbers of computing systems in one place. Research is ongoing on how efficient cooling system can be designed along with efforts in reducing the heat radiation from devices.

There is a lot more happening in this area for those who are interested.

But, what interests us today is how all of this comes to impact us in our daily lives. In the next decade, we can assure ourselves that we’ll be using more and more of wireless technology whether at home or mobile. As phones becomes replacements for computers, it’s obvious that wireless is the technology to watch. You may still have cables and fiber that bring the internet to your homes and offices, but you will possibly use wireless connection for access – whether it be WiFi or through GPRS or may be even 3G connection.

In Nepali context, we may be able to get the ubiquitous Blackberry service finally in Nepal, producing our own share of crackberries. We may also start seeing more organizations finally sensing the ubiquitous ness of the Internet and choosing to use it more. Banks have been in the forefront of encouraging customers to use e-Banking services without much success – but this will change. It took ATMs the last decade to be the preferred means for personal banking in Nepal, and eBanking will take at least half of that time frame to be widely used.

Another aspect of usage will be the increased focus in education institutions on the use of the network for students use. Universities and colleges have been spending a lot of money and resources in building libraries, but as many international publications and journals make internet the preferred means of delivering texts, research materials as well as other teaching resources, Nepali institutions will need to connect with high speed Research and Education Networks like the Internet2 (US), GEANT (Europe), APAN (Asia) if they want the students to have access to resources. The connection to these international networks will in fact make the local students a lot more competitive when they go abroad, having had access to the resources already.

Last but not least, there are progressing signs that Nepalis, who went abroad 10-20 years ago have finally made a mark in their own fields in their adopted home countries. They are now poised to help the industry, academia and the government in Nepal with expertise and knowledge in their specific areas. They are interested to share their knowledge with local youths and professionals. The use of video conferencing facilities have made this a lot more easy then in the past – whereby they had to travel to Nepal for such knowledge sharing activities. Organizations in Nepal and US are now working to create a regular series of such knowledge transfer initiatives. Computer Association of Nepal with its US chapter has successfully piloted this last year already.

Kathmandu University will soon start regular lectures over video conferencing facilities with faculty in Europe. Doctors at Kathmandu Model Hospital do a video conferencing session with doctors in its satellite hospital in Dolkha every morning, and all of them are regularly joined by experts in New Mexico, US for regular consultation and medical discussion. They are sometimes joined by helath workers in Nangi, Myagdi, also over video conferencing.

The future is there for those are able to use the technology for making their lives easier, and the next year and the decade will be no different. Innovation in technology, Ingenuity in usage and Improvement in user experience is all what’s for us in 2010.

So, I guess as a tech savvy guy.. I am supposed to have a blog. I had an intention to get one for a while, but finally I found the right system and time to get it done. Here I hope I can write about stuffs I like..